This fascinating book showcases hundreds of eye-catching tattoos that pay tribute to various scientific disciplines, from evolutionary biology and neuroscience to mathematics and astrophysics, and reveals the stories of the individuals who chose to inscribe their obsessions in their skin. Best of all, each tattoo provides a leaping-off point for bestselling essayist and lecturer Zimmer to reflect on the science in question, whether it's the importance of an image of Darwin's finches or the significance of the uranium atom inked into the chest of a young radiologist.

    The objective here is to explain science in a simple, attractive and fun form that is open to all.The first axiom of this approach was set out as follows: “We believe in the magic of science. We hope to show you that sci-ence is not a secret art, accessible only to a dedicated few. It involves learning about nature and society, and aspects of our existence which affect us all, and which we should all therefore have the chance to understand. We shall interpret science for those who might not speak its language fluently, but want to understand its meaning. We don’t teach, we just tell stories about the beginnings of science, the natural phenomena and the underlying principles through which they occur, and the lives of the people who discovered them.”The aim of the writings collected in this series is to present some key scientific events, ideas and personalities in the form of short stories that are easy and fun to read. Scientific and philo-sophical concepts are explained in a way that anyone may under-stand. Each story may be read separately, but at the same time they all band together to form a wide-ranging introduction to the history of science and areas of contemporary scientific research, as well as some of the recurring problems science has encountered in history and the philosophical dilemmas it raises today.Review“If I were the only survivor on a remote island and all I had with me were this book, a Swiss army knife and a bottle, I would throw the bottle into the sea with the note: ‘Don’t worry, I have everything I need.’”— Ciril Horjak, alias Dr. Horowitz, a comic artist“The writing is understandable, but never simplistic. Instructive, but never patronizing. Straightforward, but never trivial. In-depth, but never too intense.”— Ali Žerdin, editor at Delo, the main Slovenian newspaper“Does science think? Heidegger once answered this question with a decisive No. The writings on modern science skillfully penned by Sašo Dolenc, these small stories about big stories, quickly convince us that the contrary is true. Not only does science think in hundreds of unexpected ways, its intellectual challenges and insights are an inexhaustible source of inspiration and entertainment. The clarity of thought and the lucidity of its style make this book accessible to anyone … in the finest tradition of popularizing science, its achievements, dilemmas and predicaments.”— Mladen Dolar, philosopher and author of A Voice and Nothing More“Sašo Dolenc is undoubtedly one of our most successful authors in the field of popular science, possessing the ability to explain complex scientific achievements to a broader audience in a clear and captivating way while remaining precise and scientific. His collection of articles is of particular importance because it encompasses all areas of modern science in an unassuming, almost light-hearted manner.”— Boštjan Žekš, physicist and former president of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts

    "Psychology Applied to Teaching "takes complex psychological theories demonstrates how they apply to the everyday experiences of in-service teachers. The Eleventh Edition combines fresh concepts and contemporary research with long standing theory and applications to create a textbook that speaks to today' s teachers and students."New! "Chapter 9: Social Cognitive Theory has been added in response to reviewer suggestions and the many recent developments in cognitive research. No other educational psychology book currently offers a separate chapter on this topic."New! ""Take a Stand!" features give the author an opportunity to spotlight issues such as inclusion, school violence, or high-stakes testing, and encourages debate on critical issues in education. Also accessible on the textbook web site with additional resources and pedagogy and in the Eduspace course with online chats."New! "Coverage of key national standards including PRAXIS and INTASC has been added and referenced throughout the text. A convenient correlation table highlighting text coverage is located on the inside covers for students and professors, with additional suggestions for instructor use in the IRM."Case in Print" exercises in every chapter use recent news articles to demonstrate how basic ideas or techniques are being applied by educators from the primary grades through high school. Each article is followed by several open-ended questions to encourage reflection. This feature can also be found on the textbook Web site."Suggestions for Teaching in YourClassroom" sections include detailed descriptions of how to apply the information and concepts discussed in the chapter to the classroom. These features are intended to be read while the book is used as a text and to serve as a reference for in-service teachers later on.Journal entries help students to prepare and use a Reflective Journal. Entries appear in the margins of the text and encourage readers to consider their own personality, style, and teaching situation in establishing personal guidelines for teaching. A guide for setting up a Reflective Journal is included in Chapter 16--students can use their journals as a reference before and during their teaching experience.Eduspace is a customizable, powerful Interactive platform that provides instructors with text-specific online courses and content in multiple disciplines. Eduspace gives an instructor the ability to create all or part of their course online using the widely recognized tools of Blackboard and quality text-specific content from HMCo. Instructors can quickly and easily assign homework exercises, quizzes, tests, tutorials and supplemental study materials and can modify that content or even add their own.

    Since the publication of the First Edition over thirty years ago, Div, Grad, Curl, and All That has been widely renowned for its clear and concise coverage of vector calculus, helping science and engineering students gain a thorough understanding of gradient, curl, and Laplacian operators without required knowledge of advanced mathematics.

    In this book, Dr. Humphreys explains this phenomenon with his new cosmology including an easy-to-read popular summary and two technical papers.

    Because it takes time for light to travel, we see more and more distant regions of the universe as they were in the successively greater past. Impey uses this concept—"look-back time"—to take us on an intergalactic tour that is simultaneously out in space and back in time. Performing a type of cosmic archaeology, Impey brilliantly describes the astronomical clues that scientists have used to solve fascinating mysteries about the origins and development of our universe.The milestones on this journey range from the nearby to the remote: we travel from the Moon, Jupiter, and the black hole at the heart of our galaxy all the way to the first star, the first ray of light, and even the strange, roiling conditions of the infant universe, an intense and volatile environment in which matter was created from pure energy. Impey gives us breathtaking visual descriptions and also explains what each landmark can reveal about the universe and its history. His lucid, wonderfully engaging scientific discussions bring us to the brink of modern cosmology and physics, illuminating such mind-bending concepts as invisible dimensions, timelessness, and multiple universes.A dynamic and unforgettable portrait of the cosmos, How It Began will reward its readers with a deeper understanding of the universe we inhabit as well as a renewed sense of wonder at its beauty and mystery.

    David Peat explains the development and meaning of this Superstring Theory in a thoroughly readable, dramatic manner accessible to lay readers with no knowledge of mathematics. The consequences of the Superstring Theory are nothing less than astonishing.

    String theory has been called the "theory of everything." It seeks to describe all the fundamental forces of nature. It encompasses gravity and quantum mechanics in one unifying theory. But it is unproven and fraught with controversy. After reading this book, you'll be able to draw your own conclusions about string theory.Steve Gubser begins by explaining Einstein's famous equation "E = mc2," quantum mechanics, and black holes. He then gives readers a crash course in string theory and the core ideas behind it. In plain English and with a minimum of mathematics, Gubser covers strings, branes, string dualities, extra dimensions, curved spacetime, quantum fluctuations, symmetry, and supersymmetry. He describes efforts to link string theory to experimental physics and uses analogies that nonscientists can understand. How does Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu relate to quantum mechanics? What would it be like to fall into a black hole? Why is dancing a waltz similar to contemplating a string duality? Find out in the pages of this book."The Little Book of String Theory" is the essential, most up-to-date beginner's guide to this elegant, multidimensional field of physics.

    Ada's life spanned the years 1815 to 1852, during which the newly introduced rail lines and telegraph access made the power of technology a reality in people's lives. The Romantic movement was the backlash against those who would attempt to apply "scientific" thinking to every aspect of the human experience. As one of the Romantic movement's greatest prophets, Lord Byron's excessive indulgence of various illicit desires (one being particularly dangerous) led him to marry a woman who deluded herself into believing she could save him. Ada's mother, Annabella, was the dominant force in her life -- a self-righteous and self-serving woman who embraced the new virtues of rationality.The marriage lasted barely long enough for Annabella to become pregnant, and she spent the rest of her life justifying the infamous separation from her celebrity husband. Annabella barred Byron from any contact with his daughter and put Ada on a strict regimen of moral and mathematical study to suppress any Byronic tendencies Ada may have inherited. To the public eye, Ada was a curiosity. Put upon in an entirely modern way, Ada was famous from the day she was born. Although Ada took up science with enthusiasm, her Byronic eccentricities and passions were not extinguished by logic. Like her father, Ada looked to marriage to save her, but her husband, the future Earl of Lovelace, was not able to control her in the end. As an adult, Ada set out to find her mission, which she hoped would combine her two halves, and prove that the product of science and poetry would produce genius, not a monstrosity. Her work with Babbage was one attempt at a "poetical science" requiring imagination and rigor. She also indulged in many of the other popular ideas of the day, such as phrenology and mesmerism, with a more discerning eye than most. At the end of her life, she turned to the new work being done with that mysterious force, electricity, in the hopes of finding a molecular basis in the human nervous system to explain emotions. She was plagued by this time with both physical and mental disorders, and so also hoped to find some personal salvation in this quest. But her Byronic nature was getting stronger in the form of an affair and gambling addiction (there is an interesting speculation that she tried to develop a mathematical formula to beat the odds), and she finally succumbed to illness. In the end she requested to be buried next to the father she never knew in life. The Bride of Science is a wonderful portrait of the struggle between reason and passion. --Laura Wood, Science & Nature Editor

    Scott guides readers through the latest advances in stem cell research in clear, accessible language, telling the stories of the researchers who are exploring the potential of stem cells to cure cancer, grow new organs, and repair the immune system. He also leads readers through a discussion of the question at the heart of the explosive ethical debate: How, as a society, do we balance our responsibilities to the unborn and the sick? Stem Cell Now is essential reading for anyone who wants to build an informed opinion on stem cell research.

    Along the way Stephen Baxter looks at our place in the universe, considers the possibility that we are in fact alone, and wonders whether that fact gives us the right to inherit everything. He also looks at how we might strive to overcome the limitations of the physical universe and win the deepest future. Stephen Baxter has brought his trademark narrative flair and imaginative brilliance to the latest ideas in physics and cosmology and produced a breathtaking guide to our possible futures.

    The magnetic North Pole will eventually trade places with the South Pole. Satellite evidence suggests to some scientists that the move has already begun, but most still think it won't happen for many decades. All agree that it has happened many times before and will happen again. But this time it will be different. It will be a very bad day for modern civilization.Award-winning science journalist Alanna Mitchell tells in The Spinning Magnet the fascinating history of one of the four fundamental physical forces in the universe, electromagnetism. From investigations into magnetism in thirteenth-century feudal France and the realization six hundred years later in the Victorian era that electricity and magnetism were essentially the same, to the discovery that Earth was itself a magnet, spinning in space with two poles and that those poles aperiodically reverse, this is a utterly engrossing narrative history of ideas and science that readers of Stephen Greenblatt and Sam Kean will love.The recent finding that Earth's magnetic force field is decaying ten times faster than previously thought, portending an imminent pole reversal, ultimately gives this story a spine-tingling urgency. When the poles switch, a process that takes many years, Earth is unprotected from solar radiation storms that would, among other things, wipe out all electromagnetic technology. No satellites, no Internet, no smartphones--maybe no power grid at all. Such potentially cataclysmic solar storms are not unusual. The last one occurred in 2012, and we avoided returning to the Dark Ages only because the part of the sun that erupted happened to be facing away from Earth. One leading US researcher is already drawing maps of the parts of the planet that would likely become uninhabitable.

    You can’t fathom the weirdness– unless you’re one of the ER aliens. If you are, buy a dozen copies to give away: to your family, your neighbors, and the PTA. They’ll learn things you never had the heart to tell them, but they should know, like how it's like to work in the ER, the deviousness of shampoo bottles and the dangers of frying bacon naked.

    The book's lexicon is limited to the thousand most common words in the English language, excluding physics, energy, galaxy, or even universe. Through the eyes of a fictional scientist (Student-People) hunting for dark matter with one of the biggest telescopes (Big-Seers) on Earth (Home-World), cosmologist Roberto Trotta explores the most important ideas about our universe (All-there-is) in language simple enough for anyone to understand. A unique blend of literary experimentation and science popularization, this delightful book is a perfect gift for any aspiring astronomer. The Edge of the Sky tells the story of the universe on a human scale, and the result is out of this world.

    The emphasis is, instead, on the myriad ways in which the universe presents itself to us--and how, as observers and participants in its processes, we respond to it. "Life, like a dome of many-colored glass," wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley, "stains the white radiance of eternity." The author seeks here to explore the variety that gives life its beauty.Taken from Dyson's recent public lectures--delivered to audiences with no specialized knowledge in hard sciences--the book begins with a consideration of the practical and political questions surrounding biotechnology. As he seeks how best to explain the place of life in the universe, Dyson then moves from the ethical to the purely scientific. The book concludes with an attempt to understand the implications of biology for philosophy and religion.The pieces in this collection touch on numerous disciplines, from astronomy and ecology to neurology and theology, speaking to the lay reader as well as to the scientist. As always, Dyson's view of human nature and behavior is balanced, and his predictions of a world to come serve primarily as a means for thinking about the world as it is today.